"ALL IN THE BLUE UNCLOUDED WEATHER."
"When are we going to begin some real climbing--eh, Phil?"
"Oh, I don't know. By the way, Fordham, I'm not sure that real high
climbing isn't a mistake. It seems rather a thin thing to put oneself
to any amount of unmitigated fag, and go sleeping out under rocks or in
huts and in all sorts of beastly places chock full of fleas, and turn
out at ungodly hours in the morning--in the middle of the night,
rather--merely for the sake of shinning up to the top of some confounded
rock that scores of other fellows have shinned up already, and thousands
more will. No; I believe there's far more sense in this sort of thing,
and I'm certain it's far more fun."
"This sort of thing" being a long day's expedition of the nature of a
picnic, a walk for the most part over the glacier to some point of
interest or scenic advantage, which in the present instance was a trip
to the Mountet Cabin, a structure erected by the Alpine Club high up
among the rocks at the base of the Besso, for the convenience of parties
ascending the Rothhorn or traversing one of the several difficult, and
more or less dangerous, glacier passes leading into the next valley.
The hour was early--before sunrise in fact--and our two friends were
threading their way rapidly between the rows of brown _chalets_ which
constitute the picturesque hamlet of Zinal, intent on overtaking the
rest of their party, who had "just strolled quietly on," a process which
in nineteen cases out of twenty may be taken to mean that if the
overtaker comes up with the advance guard within a couple of hours, he
or she has progressed at a rate by no means pleasant or advisable as the
start for a long day's walk or climb. This instance, however, was the
twentieth, for whereas those in advance consisted of General Wyatt and
his niece, two learned young ladies with short-cropped hair and
spectacles, and a young clergyman, also in spectacles, the athletic pair
had no difficulty in overhauling them in a very short time, and that
with no inordinate effort.
"Well, Mr Fordham. It isn't always we poor women who keep everybody
waiting," said Alma, mischievously, as they came up, with a glance at
Phil, to whose reluctance to leave his snug couch until the very last
moment was due the fact that the party had not started together.
"That's what comes of doing a good action--one always gets abused for
it," replied Fordham. "If I hadn't acted as whipper-in you'd never have
seen this lazy dog until you were half-way home again."
"Oh, the poor _men_! They never can bring themselves to leave their
beds. And yet they call themselves the stronger sex," put in one of the
shock-headed young women, who, by virtue of being students at one of the
seats of learning recently founded for their sex, looked down as from a
lofty pedestal and with sublime pity upon the world at large. "The
strong-minded sex, I should have said."
"Not much use, are they, Miss Severn?" said the parson in playful
banter.
"Except when the midnight mouse in the wainscotting suggests burglars,
or the booming of the wind in the chimney, bogies," rejoined Fordham,
tranquilly. "In a thunderstorm, too, their presence is apt to be highly
reassuring."
To this the shock-headed one deigned no rejoinder. She and her sister
had formed some slight acquaintance with the Wyatts, and had joined them
in expeditions similar to the present one; in fact, were rather more
glad to do so than the others were that they should. Like too many of
their kind they imagined that disagreeable, not to say rude, remarks at
the expense of the opposite sex demonstrated the superiority of their
own in general, and such representatives of it as devoted their minds to
conic sections in particular.
Nothing, as a rule, is more depressing to the poor creatures of an
effete civilisation than an early morning start. Than the hour of
summer sunrise in the Alps, however, nothing is more exhilarating. The
cool, fresh, bracing air, the statuesque grandeur of the great
mountains, the dash and sparkle of the swirling stream, the mingling
aromatic fragrances distilling from opening wild flowers and resinous
pines--it is a glimpse of fairyland, a very tonic to heart and brain, a
reservoir of nerve power to limb and system.
And now beyond the huge projecting shoulder of the Alpe d'Arpitetta the
rays of the newly-risen sun were flooding the snowfields with a golden
radiancy. No more shade directly. But the air was crisp, and the sky
of cloudless beauty. To two of those present it was but the beginning
of a glowing halcyon day--one among many. Nearly a fortnight had gone
by since their arrival, a fortnight spent in similar fashion--one day
succeeding another, spent from dawn to dark amid the sublimest scenes of
Nature on her most inspiring scale.
Philip Orlebar, the mercurial, the careless, had undergone a marked
change. And it was a change which affected him for the better, was that
brought about by this crisis of his life, in that it seemed to impart a
not wholly unneeded ballast to his otherwise line character, a dignity
to his demeanour which became him well, the more so that there was the
stamp of a great and settled happiness upon his face, and in the
straight, sunny glance of the clear eyes, that was goodly to look upon.
The Fire of the Live Coal burnt bright and clear.
"Alma, darling, why not let me say something to your uncle now instead
of waiting until you go home again?" he said one day, when they were
scrambling about among the rocks in search of the coveted edelweiss.
"Then I shall feel that you do really belong to me."
She looked at him for a moment--looked at him standing over her in his
straight youthful strength and patrician beauty, and hesitated. She was
growing very fond of him, and, more important still, very proud of him,
which with a woman of Alma's stamp means that her surrender is already a
thing to be ranked among certainties. But the circumstances of her home
life had been such as to impart to her character a vein of wisdom, of
caution, which was considerably beyond her years.
"No, Phil--not yet," she answered, with a little shake of her head; but
beneath all the decision of her tone there lay a hidden caress. "This
is a summer idyll--a mere holiday. Wait until it is over and life--real
life--begins again. No, stop--I won't have that--here," she broke off
suddenly, springing away from him with a laugh and a blush. "Remember
how many people at the hotel have telescopes, not to mention the big one
planted out in front of the door. We may constitute an object of
special attention at the present moment, for all we know."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Return we to our party now bound for the Mountet hut, _via_ the Durand
glacier. This was not the first time they had made this expedition,
consequently they were able to dispense with a guide--and Fordham, at
any rate, had had sufficient previous Alpine experience. The great
silent ice river locked within the vast depths of its rock-bound bed
rippled in a succession of frozen billows between its lofty mountain
walls, the human figures traversing it looking the merest pigmies among
the awful vastness of the Alpine solitude. Myriad threads of clear
water gurgled with musical murmur through the blue smooth funnels they
had worn for themselves in the surface of the ice, which glistened and
sparkled in the sunlight in a sea of diamond-like facets. "Tables,"
viz, stones of all shapes and sizes heaved up, by the action of the
glacier, upon smooth round ice-pedestals--sometimes perfectly wonderful
in their resemblance to the real article of furniture--abounded, and
here and there the dull hollow roar of some heavier stream plunging
between the vertical blue sides of a straight chimney-like shaft, which
it had worn to an incredible depth by its action.
"What an extremely good-looking fellow that young Orlebar is," remarked
the clergyman, who had been observing the pair some little distance in
front.
"I can't say that handsome men are at all to my taste," replied the
elder of the two learned sisters, loyal to a recollection of evenings
spent at meetings of various scientific societies in the company of an
undersized, round-shouldered professor with a huge head of unkempt hair
and a very dandruffy coat-collar. "There is never anything in them.
They are invariably empty-headed to a degree."
"And desperately conceited," put in the younger, acidly.
"And this young Orlebar is the most empty-headed and conceited of them
all," rejoined the elder. "I consider him a perfectly odious young
man."
"Really? Now, do you know--I--er--I thought him rather a nice fellow,"
said the clergyman timidly. "Very pleasant and taking manners, and a
perfect gentleman."
"There is no accounting for tastes, of course," was the severely frigid
reply; and the poor parson's heart sank within him as he wondered
whether this sort of thing was to be his lot all day, and whether it
would be practicable to cut adrift from his present convoy and effect a
juncture with Fordham and the General, now some few score yards in the
rear.
"Alma dear, who on earth cut those awful Severns into our crowd to-day?"
Philip was saying, moved doubtless by that extraordinary coincidence
which inspires two people simultaneously with the same idea, though that
idea be entirely irrelevant to any subject then under consideration or
discussion.
Alma laughed.
"I think they more than three parts cut themselves in, and having done
so, cut in Mr Massiter," she answered.
"Oh, I don't mind the parson! He's an inoffensive chap, you know, and a
good sort, I think. But those two fearful girls, with their `terms' and
their `triposes' and the `dear Principal,' and their shock heads, and
`quite too-too' get-up! Faugh! They never open their mouths without
saying something tart and disagreeable. I suppose they think it a sign
of erudition."
"We mustn't abuse other people, especially on a day like this--it's a
bad habit to get into. I agree with you though--they might make
themselves a little more pleasant. However, they have their use.
Didn't it ever occur to you, you dear, foolish boy, that I may not
always care to be the only girl in the party? Though it amounts almost
to the same thing, for you never will let any one else come near me."
"No, I won't," he assented, cheerfully. "I want you all to myself. It
may not last much longer. And--what a time we have had. I would
willingly go back and go through it all again."
"But we are not going away to-morrow, or the next day either," she
replied, with a sunny laugh. "We shall have many more such days as
this."
"It is perfect!" he continued, now in a low tone. "Almost too perfect
to last. When shall we be ever again together like this?"
The remark was made without a shadow of _arriere pensee_, yet it sounded
almost prophetic. Why should it, however? No cloud was in their sky
any more than in the firmament of deep blue spreading overhead. No
shadow was across their path any more than upon the dazzling snowfields
lying aloft in pure and unbroken stretches. The morrow would be but a
reproduction of to-day--a heaven of youth and its warm pulsations, of
sunny freedom from care, and--of love.
And now Fordham's voice was heard behind.
"Hallo, Phil?" it shouted, characteristically addressing the stronger
and, in its owner's opinion, more important and only responsible member
of the pair in advance. "Better hold on till we come up. We are
getting among the _seracs_."
They were. Great masses of ice, by the side of which a five-storey
house would look puny, were heaving up to the sky. The glacier here
made a steep and abrupt drop, falling abroad into wide, lateral chasms--
not the black and grim crevasses of bottomless depth into which an army
might disappear and leave no trace, such as the smooth, treacherous
surface of the upper _neves_ are seamed with, but awkward rifts for all
that, deep enough to break a limb or even a neck. A labyrinthian course
along the sharp ice-ridges overhanging these became necessary, and
although Philip was armed with the requisite ice-axe and by this time
knew how to wield it, Fordham satirically reflected that the mind of a
man in the parlous state of his friend was not hung upon a sufficiently
even balance to ensure the necessary equilibrium from a material and
physical point of view. So he chose to rally his party.
A little ordinary caution was necessary, that was all. A little
step-cutting now and then, a helping hand for the benefit of the ladies,
and they threaded their way in perfect safety among the yawning rifts,
the great blue _seracs_ towering up overhead, piled in titanic
confusion--here in huge blocks, there standing apart in tall needle-like
shafts. One of these suddenly collapsed close to them, falling with an
appalling roar, filling the air with a shower of glittering fragments,
causing the hard surface to vibrate beneath them with the grinding crash
of hundreds of tons of solid ice.
"By Jove! What a magnificent sight?" cried the old General. "I
wouldn't have missed that for the world."
"`He casteth forth His ice like morsels,'" quoted the parson to himself,
but not in so low a tone as not to be heard by Alma, becoming aware of
which he was conscious of a nervous and guilty start, as of one who had
allowed himself to be found preaching out of church. But he had in her
no supercilious or scoffing critic.
"I think the vastness of this ice-world is the most wonderful thing in
Nature, Mr Massiter," she said.
"It is indeed, Miss Wyatt," was the pleased reply.
And then, catching eagerly at this chance of relief from the somewhat
depressing spell of the two learned ones, the good man attached himself
to her side and engaged her in conversation, not altogether to the
satisfaction of Philip, who, relinquishing the entrancing but somewhat
boyish amusement of heaving boulders down the smooth, slippery slope of
the ice, sprang forward to help her up the narrow, treacherous path of
the loose moraine--for they had left the ice now for a short time.
Virtue was its own reward, however--it and a stone--which, dislodged by
Alma's foot, came bounding down with a smart whack against the left
ankle of the too eager cavalier, evoking from the latter a subdued if
involuntary howl, instead of the mental "cuss-word" which we regret to
say might have greeted the occurrence had it owned any other author.
Steep and toilsome as this little bit of the way was, the two
strong-minded ones still found breath enough to discourse to the
General--or, rather, _through_ him _at_ Fordham, upon the never-failing
topic, the unqualified inferiority of the other sex, causing that genial
veteran to vote them bores of the most virulent kind, and mentally to
resolve to dispense with their company at whatever cost on all future
expeditions which he might undertake.
"Why, you couldn't get on for a day without us!" said Fordham, bluntly,
coming to the rescue. "How would you have got along those _seracs_ just
now, for instance, if left to yourselves?"
"Life does not wholly consist in crossing glaciers, Mr Fordham," was
the majestic reply.
"It runs on a very good parallel with it though. And the fact remains,
as I said before. You couldn't be happy for a day without us."
"Indeed?" said the elder and more acid of the two, with splendid
contempt. "Indeed? Don't you flatter yourself. We could be happy--
perfectly happy--all our lives without you."
"That's fortunate, for I haven't asked you to be happy all your lives
_with_ me," answered Fordham, blandly.
The green eyes of the learned pair glared--both had green eyes--like
those of cats in the dark. There was a suspicious shake in the shapely
shoulders of Alma Wyatt, who, with the parson, was leading the way, and
the General burst into such a frantic fit of coughing that he seemed in
imminent peril of suffocation; while a series of extraordinary sounds,
profuse in volume if subdued in tone, emanating from Philip's broad
chest, would have led a sudden arrival upon the scene to imagine that
volatile youth to be afflicted with some hitherto undiscovered ailment,
lying midway between whooping-cough and the strangles.
And now once more, the fall of the glacier surmounted, the great
ice-field lay before them in smooth and even expanse. And what a scene
of wild and stately grandeur was that vast amphitheatre now opening out.
Not a tree, not a shrub in sight; nothing but rocks and ice--a great
frozen plain, seamed and crevassed in innumerable cracks, shut in by
towering mountains and grim rock-walls, the summits of which were
crowned with layers of snow--the perilous "cornice" of the Alpine
climber--curling over above the dizzy height--of dazzling whiteness
against the deep blue of the heavens. In crescent formation they stood,
those stately mountains encircling the glaciers, the snow-flecked hump
of the Grand Cornier and the huge and redoubted Dent Blanche, whose
ruddy ironstone precipices and grim ice-crowned _aretes_ glowed in the
full midday sunlight with sheeny prismatic gleam; the towering
Gabelhorn, and the knife-like point of the Rothhorn soaring away as if
to meet the blue firmament itself. Gigantic ice-slopes, swept smooth by
the driving gales, shone pearly and silver; and huge overhanging masses
of blue ice, where the end of a high glacier had broken off, stood forth
a wondrously beautiful contrast in vivid green. But this scene of
marvellous grandeur and desolation was not given over to silence, for
ever and anon the fall of a mighty _serac_ would boom forth with a
thunderous roar. The ghostly rattle and echo of falling stones high up
among those grim precipices was never entirely still, while the hoarse
growling of streams cleaving their way far below in the heart of the
glacier was as the voices of prisoned giants striving in agonised
throes.